Sunday, February 1, 2009

Commercials Suck...

Unless they are as anticipated as the content itself...like on the Super Bowl.

The spots are so popular they are featured on the NBC website--Right next to "Matt Lauer interviews the President"


And on Hulu, NBC and News Corps co-owned TV and Movie content site, the same thing. Not to mention many other sites I found embedding the spots and allowing viewers to vote for their favorites.
Interactive, on-demand, and front and center. Hmmmm.

Wonder what might happen if there was an injection of "creative" in radio spot creative--good writing, multiple voices, real sound effects, and no zaps and explosions. Afterall, commercials take up, in most cases, at least 20% of every hour.

Are there ANY spots on your station you would place on your website with a big sign saying, "listen to me?"

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would agree with this assessment. Why not put a station giveaway or promo up on the website? The listener gets to hear why they need to listen to your station, plus you can draw in potential listeners with proper imaging. With the advent of online listening through iPhone, Blackberry, and smart-phone apps, some content may be omitted due to regulations.

Harve, how near or far in the future do you think that online listenership should factor into ratings?

Anonymous said...

To be fair - the SB is the ONLY time all year that commercials are received this way.

So maybe a more relevant question would be - what event(s) is your station(s) creating that are so exciting & special that the commercial sponsorships could be made an anticipated part of the entertainment?

HARVE ALAN said...

Jeff, that is a terrific question and your point is correct. The SB is a special event and the spots rise to that occasion. Knowing all that I chose to use the event to make my point--with 20% of every hour commercial content we need to pay more attention to the quality of the commercials.

And to Anon...No reason not to put promos, etc. on the website. Yes, licensing will be an issue in certain circumstances. As things develop I would hope some of those deals will get resolved. Combining on-line listenership will be an issue for the foreseeable future if the content is not 100% duplicated. Arbitron's policy on this is correct. Since ratings are used to set ad rates (and programming success of course)it would be improper to combine streams that air separate commercials. If the content is 100% duplicated, then Arbitron would allow the audiences to be combined.

Sebastian said...

Very nice. Thanks for that!